


Integrated Resource Restoration

by Guede



Series: Sustainable Management [2]
Category: Justified, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, All the Hales Are Trolls, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst and Humor, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Sheriff Stilinski, Cockblocking, Courtship, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Human Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Incest, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Stiles Stilinski Is A Good Son, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 01:55:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4728404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dating while on the job is a pain.  Also, Stiles would like to know why everyone in this town is a stalker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Integrated Resource Restoration

**Author's Note:**

> The _Justified_ crossover is more of a cameo, and you do not need to know the source material to understand those parts. You just need to know that Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens and Jacob Pitts plays Tim Gutterson.

Stiles and Derek are on a group date at the bowling alley because Stiles is an amazing best friend. Astonishing. Absolutely up for sainthood. Jesus Christ himself couldn’t do better, and Stiles means that in every interpretation of that sentence possible.

“He’s a werewolf,” Derek mutters. He slouches down another inch, as if that’s going to help hide his leather-jacketed, cool neutrals only, scowly self in the midst of gaggles of brightly-dressed retirees and giggly children’s birthday parties. “I don’t understand how is he this _bad_.”

“Scott’s talented,” Stiles sighs, and hands Derek the soda.

Derek slumps some more, till Stiles kicks him in the ankle. Then he comes up even scowlier, as if one, Stiles hasn’t just saved him from an embarrassing slide onto his ass, and two, Stiles is ever going to suffer through this continuous train wreck alone.

“Cora was better than this when she was five,” Derek says under his breath.

“Well, then why don’t you come up and do it?” Scott hisses, stomping back to them. He glances over his shoulder, where Allison is pasting on a slightly strained smile for Jackson and his girlfriend, and then grabs _Stiles’_ binder from him. “You could at least look like you’re paying attention.”

“Hey!” Stiles slaps off Derek’s hand, because pissy werewolf defending him is only cute till Derek jams his claws through the cover, their office supply budget is _not_ endless, and yanks the binder back from Scott. “Dude, I’m trying. But this is bullshit. Come on, Scott. It’s bullshit and you know it, and I don’t understand why the hell we’re still here. We should just blow off Whittemore and go to the drive-in like we planned.”

Scott looks like he totally gets Stiles and agrees, but then Allison does her magic thing and gets Scott’s head to rotate like it’s magnetized and she’s the North Pole. She looks at him, he winces, and then he looks at Stiles. “I know, I know, but it’s not Jackson, okay? It’s Lydia. She did Allison a huge favor with Harris and now we’re helping her out.”

“With what?” Derek waves his soda at the scoreboard. “Crushing your ego? I don’t think she needs the help.”

Stiles sighs. “Derek, don’t be an asshole to Scott.”

“You could get off your ass and throw in, if you’re so sure,” Scott says mulishly. He’s not exactly growling, but his voice is dropping in that direction.

“Scott, for fuck’s sake, he’s not allowed to play. We had enough trouble just getting them to lift his ban for tonight,” Stiles says. He flips over a couple pages of his binder, then gives up and shuts it. Much as he wants to get those footprints identified for his dad, his head’s not in it and he’s just getting cuts all over his fingers this way. “And why does Lydia Martin need a favor, anyway? She’s high school queen bee, favors are what she does when she mocks you in the hall instead of in front of the whole class.”

“I don’t know. She just wanted to get to know you, that’s all she’d say.” Scott and Allison have another mind-melding moment of despair. Then Scott grabs Stiles by the shoulders and leans in, only flinching a little when Derek growls. “Please, Stiles, just one stupid round. One round, she gets to say hi, whatever, and then you can go jump out the bathroom window. Please?”

Stiles drums his fingers on the binder, then shakes his head. “You owe me three patrols this week.”

“Anything, anything, thank you so _much_ ,” Scott says, and practically dances back to Allison’s side.

“You should’ve held out for four,” Derek mutters, but he’s already getting to his feet. The guy behind the rental-ball counter clears his throat and Derek makes an exaggerated production out of holding up his hands and walking around their ball rack. Then he turns around. He sizes up the available seats—Scott and Allison merging into a two-headed monster in one of a pair, Jackson sprawling over one and a half of the other—and then sits down next to Jackson.

Jackson yanks his arm and leg back just before Derek squashes them flat. He tries to look pissed about it, but Derek barely turns his head and ticks one eyebrow, and Jackson is relegated to impotently poking at the computer.

“Stiles, I’m so glad you could make it,” Lydia says. She comes up while Stiles is checking over the balls in the return chute, all creamy smile and gorgeously-tossed hair and demurely crossed knees. So okay, yeah, she’s attractive, and if Stiles was in the market, or even just not being denied backseat groping in Derek’s car, he might play.

But yep, he’s taken and currently sexually frustrated. So he picks up a ball and checks the heft, and then looks her in the eye. “What do you want? And don’t give me some crap about high school, we all know you’re early admitted into Purdue. Speaking of, why there? I’d think East Coast was more your speed.”

Lydia’s smile gets, if possible, creamier and broader. She’s not a werewolf but she’s doing a pretty spot-on impression of Talia seeing a limping deer. “I want a top ten agricultural program, graduation in three years, and a fellowship in the USDA’s Presidential Management program. The East Coast is all well and good for schmoozing but it’s a little light on testing forests, don’t you think?”

Stiles blinks. He looks at the ball in his hand, then at Lydia. “You dragged me out here because you want a recommendation? Seriously?”

“I dragged you out here because I’m the only person with higher science grades than you, I’ve interned with the European Plant Archives for the last three summers categorizing archaic strains of wolfsbane, and I’m regional U-20 champion in skeet shooting,” Lydia says. She draws herself up, which both pushes her cleavage to levels even Stiles can’t ignore and gives him the impression she won’t hesitate to leap, catch and totally not release. “That fellowship _is_ happening, and in return I’m prepared to offer—”

It’s probably not his greatest judgment call, but right then Stiles is actually interested in hearing what she’s got to say. Not like he hasn’t been approached before about government connections (all the crazy covert ops stuff aside, environmental agencies are the most likely to show up in daily life for supernatural beings), but he’s never had an elevator pitch this entitled before. Threats, sure, but like Stiles is just a dumb peon for not immediately getting on board?

Yeah, well, Lydia’s going to have to wait to explain that one. Something’s just crashed through the front doors and gone skidding towards a bunch of screaming children.

Derek roars, then leaps over the chairs and a fainting man, going for whatever it is from behind. Scott’s already intercepted the kids, doing his best to wave down their screams while fully wolfed, and yeah, give him credit, Jackson is flanking Derek in an attempt to draw the thing towards the bowling pins.

Whatever is it, the creature is quick and has claws big and strong enough to rip up whole squares of linoleum. It feints at Scott, who takes a swipe but is hampered by having to jam a kid back at the same time, then charges Jackson. Thing’s much lower to the ground and Jackson clearly doesn’t have fight training, so it bowls right over him and screeches down one of the alleys. Blood splatters over the wooden floor.

Stiles doesn’t wait to see who it’s from. He jumps up onto the return chute and goes with what he’s got: the bowling ball. It’s been a while since he played but he nails the thing right in the skull.

It collapses with a glass-shattering yowl, but momentum keeps it going straight into the bowling pins, which crash in all directions. One skitters down the alley so Derek has to take a little detour when he lopes up to check for deadness. He kicks the pin away, and then crouches down. Then stays crouched down.

Stiles has his gun back but it’s in the car. And while he’s proud of his close fighting rating, he’s also not so much of an adrenaline junkie that he’s going to go knife-to-claw when he doesn’t have to. He grabs Scott from the kids and hauls him up to Derek, and then bends down behind his boyfriend for a look at it.

“What is it?” Lydia asks. “What on earth are you all…oh. Is that a splintercat?”

“Yep,” Stiles says.

“Isn’t their range miles north of here?” Lydia says. Maybe she’s trying to convince him with her amazing expository skills.

Yeah, well, Stiles doesn’t have time for it. He sighs and gets out his phone and calls his dad.

* * *

Stiles’ dad immediately thinks it’s some kind of school prank, and grills Stiles on their past lacrosse matches like Stiles would have any idea what dumbasses at Oregon schools would be doing. Then he promises to have the local deputies show up to help with containment in five minutes, come himself in ten, and warns Stiles to not go off and investigate till then.

“Which is so unfair,” Stiles mutters, plopping onto the floor. “He makes it sound like I do that all the time.”

The bowling alley people are more than happy to get everybody into the parking lot, and Scott’s better at all that soothe-the-masses stuff, so it’s just him and Derek inside to watch the body. Derek sits down at Stiles’ back and sticks his head on Stiles’ shoulder. “You do.”

“You’re supposed to be _supportive_ ,” Stiles says, but he crooks his head so Derek can have more room. His phone buzzes; it’s a couple texts from Peter, saying he’ll try and cut his meeting short and wanting to know whether someone needs to bring them a change of clothes. Stiles rolls his eyes and texts back that Derek’s shirt is still fine, thanks. “You should lie and tell me that no, honey, you’re just fine, they’re the ones who are always hung up with paperwork and can’t get out in a timely fashion. It’s in the boyfriend manual.”

Derek shrugs and his chin digs at Stiles, so Stiles drops his shoulder in hopes that Derek will slide off. Instead Derek moves against gravity, working his way up till he’s nuzzling at Stiles’ jaw. His tongue flicks at the pulse point just behind the joint, then tickles warmly at Stiles’ earlobe. “Sorry,” he says. His hand slips over Stiles’ hip, fingers fanning out to stealth-cup the neighboring buttock. “Keep meaning to read that one.”

Sometimes you can really tell he and Peter are related, right down to the move with the two fingers down the back of Stiles’ waistband, and then the surprised, but entirely pleased noise Derek makes when Stiles twists around and shoves him down. 

Stiles grabs Derek’s hands and he totally means to just smack them down and then sit up, he swears. But he’s kind of on Derek at this point, and there’s this erection nudging Stiles in the stomach, and ugh, yes, Derek is stupidly hot. Especially when he’s looking up through his lashes at Stiles, chin tipped back, knee riding up between Stiles’ legs and goddamn it. Stiles doesn’t get off him.

“I can totally see Scott through the doors,” Stiles says. He shifts his weight onto Derek’s wrists, grinding them to the floor.

Derek whines and rubs himself up against Stiles’ stomach. “There aren’t any doors left,” he says.

“I thought Peter was the one with the exhibitionist kink,” Stiles says. He really should get up. His phone’s going again, and he can’t exactly remember what time it was when his dad said it’d be ten minutes, but it’s been at least a few since then. “Jesus, I know werewolf refractory times and all, but you’re really—hey, wait. Wait. Oh, my God, you’re not kinking on that, you’re kinking on killing that thing, aren’t you?”

“ _You_ killed it,” Derek says, all breathy and low.

Oh, _shit_ , that goes straight to Stiles’ dick. And he’s totally not the psychopathic type, seriously, he doesn’t get off on murder, it just comes with having a blood-sipping tree in your back pocket, but Derek is looking at him like that, like Stiles just shot the fucking moon and it was just a stupid splintercat and no way are they not making out now.

“I just,” Stiles mumbles, sucking his way along Derek’s lips, “I just, fuck, move your leg, no, just, right, yeah, hold it there and, I just, it’s a fucking _bowling ball_ …

“You nailed it in the head.” Derek doesn’t have his hands so he’s using the whole rest of his body to grab at Stiles, folding it up for every inch of contact, pushing hard like he’s trying to melt upwards. “The head. One throw. Just—so perfect—”

“Jesus, if this was what I got after gym class I’d be fucking acing that shit, too,” Stiles moans, frotting into Derek’s thigh. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

“Stiles!” half-screams Scott.

“Stiles,” says Stiles’ dad, sounding like he’s talking through his hand. “Stiles, get off Derek and away from the goddamn corpse. Honestly, do you want another evidence contamination cite?”

“Fuck.” Stiles lifts his head, then closes his eyes and gets off Derek. “Fuck, this is such a sucky date.”

Derek makes a mournful, agreeing noise.

* * *

Splintercats used to range all over the Pacific Northwest, but shrinking forests have pulled their range back up to Oregon. It’s not out of the realm of plausibility that one got lost and wandered down, but the Nemeton not picking up on it crossing the preserve is odd. And it coming straight into town is also odd.

“Well, labs won’t get back to us for a week, but I agree, I think we’re gonna get a big negative on rabies and spotted fever,” Stiles’ dad says. He rubs his temple and looks at the files scattered over his desk. Then he reaches absently for the half-eaten candy bar that’d been on the corner when Stiles had come in.

He picks up the bar, pauses, and looks at it. Then looks at Stiles, who crosses his arms over his chest because he is so over that look of betrayal. “Who the hell has been slipping you Butterfingers?” Stiles snaps. “I thought I’d gotten all your minions trained. Was it one of those deputies? Dad, the average local police officer has cholesterol levels in the—”

Stiles’ dad rolls his eyes, then takes a bite out of the healthy, fiber-rich granola bar like it personally murdered his grandma. “You’re sure it wasn’t a school prank?”

“Nice segue, Dad,” Stiles says, but the man’s eating the bar so he lets it go. For now. “Well, no, not unless you’re gonna let me and Scott roadtrip around interviewing people, but I can’t see how they could keep that thing quiet for the drive down without serious drugs or magic mojo. And we’ve played all the teams in our division and none of the players I’ve met strike me as having those kinds of resources.”

“Good point.” Stiles’ father rubs the side of his face again. “All right, well, keep an eye out, but we’ll treat it as a migration issue for now. You go home, I’ll wrap up here. Remember to put a sock on the knob if Derek’s staying over.”

“Oh, my God, Dad, he already slipped out to start patrol. Because this is the worst date night ever,” Stiles says. 

Stiles’ dad looks like he’d be more sympathetic if he had a Butterfinger. “Well, do your homework then.”

That doesn’t even deserve an answer (Stiles always has _at least_ a week’s worth done in advance), so Stiles just swings out of the office. And almost plants his face in Chris Argent’s chest.

He actually thinks it might be Peter at first, because silk shirt. But then he looks up, and between the bowling and the interrupted make-out and having to suddenly find plausible deniability for his hands hovering at ass-height, Stiles is pretty fucking done with the whole night. “Jesus, watch it.”

Chris steps back. Holds up his hands, both of which are wrapped around Styrofoam cups branded with the logo of his dad’s favorite café. “Sorry, didn’t see you.”

“He’s busy,” Stiles adds. Because _silk shirt_. Stiles has never seen Chris Argent in a silk shirt, didn’t even think the man knew about fabrics besides scent-disguising wool and cotton (not that there’s anything wrong with either). He pauses, then shakes his head. Hell, he doesn’t even want to cock-block. He just wants home, bed, Peter’s almond blood orange biscotti.

“Stiles,” Chris says. He shifts from foot to foot like he hasn’t just voluntarily chosen to prolong this. “Allison tells me that your chemistry teacher’s being difficult about the missed classes.”

“Yeah, right up till Peter cornered him in the grocery store and discussed the many, many younger women he can smell on him. I don’t even want to know how Harris is raiding the local dorms, you know? Anyway, thanks for your concern, next time we need to scare him we’ll be sure to call you up,” Stiles says, stomping away.

* * *

Speaking of Peter, his meeting with some Sacramento packs actually runs an extra day, and to make up for it, he offers to take Stiles to the fifties scare films retrospective that the nearby university is running. Peter and Talia and Francis all work as mediators/arbitrators for, among other clients, the state judicial system and the regional pack council, which amuses the hell out of Stiles every time he sees a Hale go in for a parking spot. No mercy should be their family motto.

“They had a ‘my son is on the varsity team’ sticker, I’m sure they understand the merits of a warm-up walk,” Peter says. He guides Stiles into the theater with a hand on the small of Stiles’ back, and takes a not-so-surreptitious whiff at Stiles’ head when they turn into the concession area. “I called ahead and they use actual butter on the popcorn here.”

And no doubt threatened the staff with loss of limb and other major bodily injury if they serve Stiles something non-vegetarian. They’ve got that sort of fearful, glassy stare of recognition, which Stiles really shouldn’t find that charming. “Oh, hey, look, they’ve got truffle oil and smoked paprika. Swanky.”

“Truffle oil is so overexposed,” Peter sniffs, but he’s already getting out his wallet. “Drinks?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a large lemon slush. Bugged my dad about his vitamin C intake this morning, can’t be a hypocrite.” Stiles smiles at Peter’s skeptical look, then leans in and nuzzles at Peter’s neck. When he pulls back, Peter’s just a little unfocused. Not enough to _not_ dust his fingertips under the hem of Stiles’ shirt before stepping away. “Hey. I don’t want to get thrown out of here.”

“Why, Stiles, you know very well the Hales are respected supporters of the university,” Peter drawls. His eyes are running Stiles over so they don’t need any punchline about the very liberal arts, and if he wasn’t a were, he’d totally have slammed that guy in the back.

As it is, he side-steps just in time, and then he and the guy see each other and God, seriously? Jackson?

Stiles stiffens, then turns around. “Hi, Lydia,” he says. “I don’t know what they’ve been saying in school, but stalking isn’t actually a turn-on for me. I’m with Peter and Derek for their love of literature and rustic Tuscan cooking.”

Lydia laughs like they’re at a country club golfing event and Stiles has just offered her her fifth mimosa of the morning. Then she leans in and clamps her hand over Stiles’ arm. “I’m second author on three papers about wolfsbane cultivation in Imperial Rome,” she says sweetly. “The Europeans offered to fast-track me if I ever wanted one of their fellowships.”

“Congratulations, you must be so proud.” Stiles hasn’t lasted this long without learning a thing or two; the Forest Service is forever lending him out for National Park Service fundraisers for his adorable, rich-granny-bait face. He twists his arm free, then backs away slowly while maintaining steady eye contact. “Lyds, I’m sure your resume is awesome, but your boyfriend sent me to the nurse’s office twice in my first semester.”

Lydia sighs and looks disappointed at somebody who’s skulking around behind them, switching between little placating noises and grumbling about Scott. “The first time was an honest mistake, even you admitted that. The second time _was_ him being a jackass, but he’s sorry and your dad scared a ten thousand dollar donation out of his father,” she says. Her eyes flick over Stiles’ shoulder again. “Also, if it’s necessary, I am happy to arrange for a private groveling session.”

“What!” Jackson yelps.

“Stiles,” Peter says. He claims Stiles’ arm while smoothly occupying Stiles’ hands with the popcorn and drinks, and then offers his now-free hand for Lydia to suspiciously take. Judging from the bulge of her eyes, he gives her a bone-cracking squeeze. “Miss Martin. So sorry to interrupt, but we should be getting to our seats now.”

Smooth as butter, Peter maneuvers a couple debating popcorn versus ice cream between them and Lydia, then dodges around a trashcan for the nearest usher. He presents their tickets and before Stiles knows it, they’re ensconced comfortably in one of the back rows.

It’s a small, offbeat theater, with nontraditional seating in the form of wide, saggy, vinyl-covered loveseats interspersed with the regular rows. Of course they’ve got one of the loveseats. Stiles can’t help but wonder how well they clean the things as he starts in on his popcorn, but hey, no barrier between him and Peter, that’s a definite plus. And a minus. “Seriously, Peter, they haven’t even rolled the trailers,” he mutters, elbowing down without lifting his hand from the bucket. “At least let us get to the feature before you get into my pants.”

Peter reaches around Stiles to stick his drink in the cupholder, and then doesn’t lean back. His head settles between Stiles’ shoulderblades, breath warm and regular against Stiles’ nape, and his hand drops to play with the bit of reversed pocket sticking out of Stiles’ pants. “But Stiles,” he murmurs. “I _missed_ you. You don’t smell like me anymore.”

It’s a total were thing. Plants don’t have senses of smell, and while Stiles does, thanks, he’s never really seen the big deal about it. Seems like it’d actually be a bitch, what with the unwanted insight into everybody and their neighbor’s kinks (or non-kinks). But yeah, when Peter says it, in that liquid, rolling voice of his, all warm honey, Stiles kind of gets it. He shifts the hot bottom of the popcorn bucket off his crotch, then curses as Peter slides a hand up his thigh.

Thank fuck, they dim the lights just then. Stiles shoves the bucket between his knees and starts frantically sucking off his fingers, trying to get them clean so he can, ah, _reciprocate_ , and Peter suddenly is snugged up tight to him, palms scorching against Stiles’ belly, nosing all over the back of Stiles’ neck. He makes a soft, hungry noise that goes straight to Stiles’ cock, then laps at where Stiles’ spine dips under his collar.

“Seriously, two days?” Stiles mumbles. He wiggles his tongue under his thumbnail for a nice burst of salt and Peter’s approving nuzzle, then tries to put his hand on Peter’s crotch. Misses, gets a thigh instead, but Peter seems okay with Stiles feeling up his inseam. “Pretty sure it’s not that quick. Also, your fault, you said they weren’t going to agree to the settlement.”

Peter sighs. His fingers crawl slowly up Stiles’ torso, tracing heated patterns over the really, very not thick at all, tee. “They’ll owe us for the extra day, and it’ll come in handy for solstice talks,” he says. He tilts his hips so Stiles’ hand is aimed towards his erection, then growls into Stiles’ shoulder when Stiles instead skips up to tug playfully at his belt. “You smell like you’ve been bathing in a vet’s office. Hasn’t Derek been looking after you?”

One of the trailers is for some sort of weird fake reality show about vamps living in a shitty house, which is funny enough to semi-drag Stiles’ attention away. He pulls at Peter’s buckle again, then snakes his arm between them and then behind Peter so he can hook it around Peter’s neck. “God, don’t sound like he’s my babysitter, that’s inappropriate in a totally not attractive way. And I thought I’d showered that all off.”

“Still smell it,” Peter says. He sounds distracted himself, although that’s probably less the trailer and more him trying to mouth his way under Stiles’ shirt-collar. “I thought you were done taking samples.”

“Huh? Oh, it’s not the tree, it’s that splintercat,” Stiles mutters. The feature’s started. He shoves the popcorn bucket onto the ground and then hikes his feet up on the loveseat so he can get more horizontal. “Turns out it was tagged in one of the NPS’s tracking programs. Dad dug out the chip and I was working on downloading the GPS data. Shit, get your knee—”

Peter moves his knee. That puts Stiles more or less under him, only the loveseat arm keeping Stiles’ head up, with his mouth steadily working its way down Stiles’ breastbone. Stiles suppresses a groan and glances around. They’ve got a row of empty seats in front of them, empty loveseats to either side, and you know, Stiles wouldn’t put it past Peter to have bought up the spaces. Still, that’s not soundproofing, and Stiles really would like to _not_ be adding to the list of places the Hales donate to in order to keep being allowed in. They might be okay with it, kinky fucks that they are, but federal employee, he’s got professional standing to uphold.

He’s got a werewolf lipping his nipple and expertly sliding a muscled thigh along his cock. Stiles tries to time his hiss for when the movie sound effects blare with the first sighting of the monster. Not too hard, the fifties weren’t a subtle time. The ooze flung out by the swamp thing looks like badly-cubed Jell-O.

The ooze. Stiles frowns, then bites his tongue as Peter’s fingertips drag circles around his bellybutton. He looks at the screen again.

Somebody screams.

Peter’s head whips up. Stiles swings his legs down, cursing as he feels the bucket go over. No, he doesn’t have his gun with him, because _goddamn_ it, he shouldn’t have to be on the clock all the time. He squints at the actual slime now dripping down the screen and tries to figure out what color it is.

“It’s down by the front exit,” Peter says, eyes glowing. “I can—”

The misshapen blob suddenly zips up the wall and then hangs from the ceiling, while moviegoers flail and leap over seats to get away. Peter bounds over the rows in the opposite direction, while Stiles…Stiles looks around and then goes for the fire extinguisher. When Peter startles the thing into falling, Stiles blasts it.

Most slime creatures are on the ectothermic side, and this one is no exception. It immediately goes sluggish, although it’s still alive enough to fling gobbets at Peter when he circles behind it. He ducks and the slime hits the wall instead, where it starts smoking and bubbling.

“Lights!” Lydia says.

 _Lights?_ Stiles thinks. And then she hits them, and his eyes sting. He stumbles back, automatically bringing up the extinguisher to shield him, and sits himself hard in a seat. The impact jars his eyes open again. Now adjusted, they can see that the thing has collapsed in a quivering heap, definite fearful sounds coming from it.

“It’s a dwarf shoggoth,” Lydia says, disbelieving. “What’s it doing here? I thought they were Everglades-only.”

“To ruin my dating life,” Stiles says. He sees Peter cock his head and waves him over. Then drops his head so it bonks Peter’s shoulder as Peter sits down next to him. “Hang on, calling my dad.”

* * *

“Trafficking,” Stiles’ dad says.

Stiles looks at him. “Who wants to traffic a dwarf shoggoth? They eat like something five times their size, their slime gets through runes, and if you try to cut off a piece, it dissolves.”

“Well, you have a better reason why one would show up here?” Stiles’ dad mutters. He rumples his hair, then pulls out his phone and grimaces at whatever he sees. “Great, great. The Park Service is sending up a ranger to relocate it.”

“It _is_ their problem,” Stiles says slowly. Splintercats, he can understand lobbing on him and his dad. They can do real damage to old-growth trees, and anyway, the GPS data had pointed squarely towards the Mt. Hood National Forest. But shoggoths are just straight-up gross. So why his dad isn’t happy to have this capture off his hands is…Stiles groans. “Oh, shit. Don’t tell me they’re sending that guy.”

Stiles’ dad’s face is all the answer Stiles needs. Then he sighs and puts away his phone, and starts looking like he’s peering over people’s heads. He frowns and waves somebody over. “You’re sure the Nemeton has no idea?”

“I know it’s early days, but I think it’d tell me if we had an evil slave-slug the size of a mini-Cooper chugging through the woods,” Stiles mutters. He’s pretty fucking pissed about that himself, at this point. The preserve isn’t the biggest Nemeton woods ever, but it’s got most of the town surrounded. If something goes through it, Stiles should know. “Okay, yeah, I guess we’d better start looking at long-haul truckers and things like that?”

“ _I’ll_ look at,” Stiles’ dad starts, and then Melissa comes up.

“Well, nothing serious, just a couple sprains where people tripped running away,” she says. She has on a very nice blouse and what Scott refers to as her ‘date’ earrings. Melissa gives Stiles a quick hug and then pulls out a couple business cards from her purse. “Nobody got slimed, thank God. I talked to the theater manager and if they get any complaints about aftereffects, they’ll go straight to me.”

“Good. At least that’s under control.” Stiles’ dad smiles tiredly at Melissa. It turns into a grimace when the manager calls both their names. “If I told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times. No, we can’t get a hazmat crew out here before the damn ten o’clock showing…”

Melissa gives him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, then leans in for a quick peck. “I think I’ll get out of your way in case you, ah, need to get persuasive. I’ll head over to the hospital, brief the ER. If it’s not too late, stop by on your way home?”

“Yeah, sure.” Stiles’ dad grimaces again. “Not likely, though. I’m sorry, Mel.”

And…when it’s time for adorable nicknames, it’s time for Stiles to give them some privacy. He and Scott both are still a little side-swiped by the whole thing, but Melissa’s already been de facto family for forever, and, more importantly, she hasn’t acted a bit different towards Stiles since she and his dad went public. He’ll get used to her eventually; he _wants_ to get used to it.

Just maybe not now, when Peter’s disappeared for over five minutes. Stiles doesn’t spot him by the concession stand or in the lobby, so he wanders out to the parking lot where all the emergency vehicles are gathered. People have started to drift off, but here and there deputies and Service rangers are still taking statements. Lydia’s giving one, and as she spots him, Stiles detours behind the first car that comes to hand.

He finds himself face to face with Chris, who’s got a gun and an evidence bag instead of coffee this time. Chris jerks oddly, then holsters the gun and actually looks kind of apologetic for waving it in Stiles’ face. It doesn’t sit too easily on him.

“If you’re looking for Peter, Talia showed up a couple minutes ago and they went to talk over there,” Chris says. He points at the open back of an ambulance, and sure enough, Stiles can see Peter’s hand and part of his arm gesturing. “Is your dad still inside?”

Stiles gives Chris a once-over. No silk shirt this time, Chris is dressed in his usual jeans and work shirt and boots, but he looks freshly shaved and he smells like cologne instead of gun oil and leather. “If I say yes, are you going to drag him out of there for nookie?”

Chris doesn’t blush. He does, however, have an eye twitch. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that.”

“Just remember that he’s senior agent for the county and he doesn’t need any more shit piled on him right now,” Stiles says. “And now we’re gonna have the Park Service coming over. Awesome, it’ll be interagency holiday hoedowns. Maybe we can do a Secret Santa of all the stupid X-files we’ve been getting lately.”

“Stiles, I have a lot of respect for your father’s job. I don’t have any intention of making life more difficult for him, or you, than it already is,” Chris says slowly. He pauses and glances at the ambulance, and Stiles can actually see the man wishing Peter would get the hell out of there and feeling conflicted about it. He and the Hales are okay, in the nod-and-move-on kind of way, but sometimes Stiles gets the feeling that Chris wishes his family history didn’t make it so awkward for him to tell off certain Hales. “I can imagine that the squonks alone must be a pain in the ass.”

“Yeah, they’re hard to catch, what with…squonks?” Stiles frowns at Chris. “What squonks? Somebody found one out here?”

Chris’ face goes blank. Not that Stiles is ever going to tell either of them this, but he looks just like Peter when Peter’s got an unexpected body in the car trunk. “Speaking of, I told your dad this, but if I can help out at all, I’d be happy to. I know my license reactivation’s still pending—”

Stiles snorts and stares pointedly at Chris’ gun holster.

“—but there are other things I can do. I’m driving Allison to the next away game and can give you a ride, if your dad’s busy,” Chris finishes, like that holster doesn’t exist.

“Peter and Derek have that covered, thanks.” And thank you, Chris, for reminding Stiles that he still doesn’t have his own car. Yeah, it’s nice to have on-demand werewolf taxi service, but sometimes Stiles wants to sneak around town without having to offer sex bribes. “Also, great segue. Very smooth, I didn’t notice the dodge at all, totally forgot that my dad neglected to mention we’re seeing _squonks_. Thanks, Chris. Nice talking to you.”

“Stiles,” Chris says urgently. “Stiles, wait—”

And how the hell the Nemeton is missing squonks, for fuck’s sake, Stiles doesn’t know, but he damn well isn’t going to sit around and let his dad futz with interagency politics and unsolved mysteries all on his lonesome. Stiles stomps around Chris and heads up to the ambulance, just in time for Peter and Talia to step out.

“Oh, Stiles, there you are.” Talia offers her cheek and Stiles awkwardly tries to press his own against it without crooking his neck too much; he feels a little weird trying to level up with her, even with a Nemeton backing him up, but she keeps insisting there’s no point in pretending he won’t grow into it soon enough. “I’m so sorry, I know you and Peter had the whole night planned out.”

“Yeah, well, things happen,” Stiles mutters, and then he gets a look at Peter’s resigned face. “Or…more things happen?”

“Those idiots in Sacramento want a conference call with you and Talia tonight,” Peter explains. “Apparently, after I left, they decided to shake up the hierarchy and we’ve got a whole new alpha to deal with.”

Stiles has something like fifty white papers and twenty-seven books on werewolf society bookmarked in his restricted-access library account, and he still doesn’t follow. “Me?”

“They want a different arbitrator now,” Peter says. “Much as I’d love to dump the lot of them, it’s a bit of an insult. And—”

“I’m the alpha, it means more if I rip them a new one, okay, whatever, let’s just go and get it over with,” Stiles sighs. He slips his arm around Peter’s waist and buries his head in Peter’s shoulder for a second, then looks up. “Can I complain to them that I’ve got a math quiz first period tomorrow?”

Talia smiles with all her teeth. “Of course, dear. Feel free to tell those gigantic numbskulls how inconvenient their silly little family drama is. It’s a complete fallacy that your senior year grades don’t matter for college applications, after all.”

“And senior burnout is a real danger, too,” Peter murmurs. He presses a quick kiss to Stiles’ temple. “Lack of nights off is a legitimate health concern.”

Stiles snickers, but it’s half-hearted. He’s doing all the numbers in his head, and by the time they get to the Hales’ house, do the call, and then Peter drives him back to his own house, he’s barely going to have time to remember to flop over the nearest werewolf before falling asleep. And he’d missed Peter too, damn it; he might not have the scent-thing going, but he’s getting used to waking up sandwiched between two bodies. He doesn’t know what to do with that arm and leg otherwise.

“Hell,” he mutters, and lets Peter usher him into the parking lot.

* * *

Stiles’ father is not exactly apologizing about leaving Stiles out of the loop on the squonks, but he gives Stiles the files and says thank-you for the new alerts Stiles has set up in the incident report database for their region. And okay, yeah, three squonks dissolving and reconstituting over and over again in the middle of a busy playground, Stiles can see his dad being too damn tired afterward to remember to mention it. Stiles himself is kicking himself for just assuming Chris and/or Melissa had had his dad out late.

“Though yeah, I think they’ve been out a lot,” Stiles says, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder. The needle goes askew _again_ , and he bites back a growl of frustration (wolves rubbing off on him) and goes to unscrew and rescrew it for the zillionth time onto the syringe. “Does your dad always pack heat when he’s dating?”

 _“He keeps a gun in the glove compartment, but so does yours,”_ Allison says. She flops on what sounds like a squeaky bed. _“Okay, let me see…Scott stayed the night Tuesday, Thursday and Friday last week, so that’s when Dad was out. Do you think it’s something really bad, whatever’s going on? Does Dad know what he’s doing?”_

Stiles finally gets the damn needle onto the syringe. “Hang on a sec,” he says. He lines the point up with the red dot Peter made on the body, then stabs down, putting all his upper body weight behind it. The needle sticks in the breastbone, then slides on through and Stiles grunts as he pulls back so it doesn’t go completely through the heart. “Okay. So, honestly, we’re not really sure what’s going on yet, but the nastiest thing that’s shown up is the joint snake they found in the school basement. I still don’t think it’s a prank, but…well, it’s prank level.”

He tugs up on the plunger with his teeth and blood starts rising into the syringe. Stiles nods off to the side and Derek obligingly flicks the spigot so the blood will run through the syringe, into the catheter attached to the other end, and down into the hole they’ve dug at the base of the Nemeton. It works for a couple splashes, but then slows to just drops.

“Sorry,” Peter says. He straddles the corpse’s head and puts his hands around the needle, then starts pumping on the chest like he’s doing CPR. The blood flow goes back up to a trickle. “Damn it, it’s going stiff. I knew we should’ve run that red light.”

“Well, we got a quota on how many speeding tickets the Service is willing to go to bat for us on,” Stiles says, shrugging. Then he shifts to hold the needle one-handed and adjusts the phone against his ear. “Sorry, what?”

 _“I said, Dad keeps bugging me about whether I see you at school, and that I should get you to come over with Scott sometime,”_ Allison says. She sounds a little disgusted, and not at Stiles. They have a pretty good relationship, her taking over Scott’s brain notwithstanding, and a big part of that is built on their mutual agreement to generally ignore the details of whatever their parents are doing. _“Do you think it’s related? I tried to ask him, but he just stalls and says that he thinks we should all get to know each other better, since we’re, um, running into each other more.”_

Stiles rolls his eyes. “We run into each other because your dad keeps tagging along with my dad.”

 _“He’s trying to help. You know, he might’ve turned in his license, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t pitch in when he saw people were in trouble,”_ Allison says sharply. _“We were here way before you were.”_

Derek snarls and through the phone Stiles can hear Allison’s startled inhale. Stiles waves Derek off. He actually likes Allison a lot better when she’s getting good and snippy, shows she hasn’t yet merged with Scott into a single entity. “Hey, hey, no offense intended. I’m just saying, I’m not sure whether he’s trying to get his license back or trying to get hired by the Service, is all.”

Allison hums thoughtfully. _“Huh. Well, when you put it like that…he did ask me the other day what I thought about us getting out of the arms business. I just thought he didn’t want to deal with people asking about—you know—but maybe not.”_

“Hmmm,” Stiles says back, because that’s what he does when the whole debacle with Allison’s grandfather and aunt come up. It was six years ago and he wasn’t around for it, and nobody who was seems particularly eager to spill the beans. And contrary to common opinion, he _does_ have a sense of tact. He just doesn’t like using it. “Shit. Hang on a—”

 _“Here, let me call you back,”_ Allison says. _“I just thought of something, but I gotta check the garage.”_

She hangs up and Stiles and Peter jiggle the corpse for the last few squirts. In Stiles’ head, the tree radiates a cozy, satiated glow. Stiles snorts, but he gives the trunk a pat as he reaches for the catheter.

Derek gets to it first, and starts winding it up with a blasé look on his face. Stiles rolls his eyes, and yeah, a tiny part of him is annoyed because he can do this on his own with a jury-rigged bicycle pump and aquarium tubing, thanks. But most of him is not unhappy about having somebody else do the clean-up while he’s communing with the tree.

He’s pretty sure that all these out-of-towners are coming in via some way besides through the preserve, but he wants to double-check. After all, the Nemeton is still a plant at the end of the day, and plant priorities, even blood-loving sentient ones, aren’t the same as human ones. Maybe it missed something.

But no, it insists that no strange wildlife has been roaming around the woods. It does point out that it has minimal influence in town and along the highway, since the trees there are all…hard to translate from tree-speak, but roughly, they’re all domesticated transplants, separate root network. If there’s an immediate, serious threat, it can work with them, but otherwise they kind of snub each other like feuding relatives at the annual barbecue.

“Well, that was helpful,” Stiles mutters, sitting back. “Not.”

“Come eat,” Peter says soothingly. “You’ll think better afterward.”

Stiles turns around and finds a cute little picnic spread. The body’s out of sight (okay, they fucked next to dead Gabriel, but normally that sort of thing throws Stiles off his feed) and instead there’s a pretty flowered blanket, an honest-to-God wicker basket, and Derek is unwrapping what looks like a platter of grilled veggies from the Hale garden. Peter is smirking and holding a plate of Talia’s fish tacos.

When it comes to Hale cooking, Stiles has no shame. He dives for it, and when Peter makes to hold it over Stiles’ head, he shoves Peter over and sits on the teasing bastard. Which is exactly what Peter wants, but whatever, Stiles has magical blackened fish goodness in his mouth. Thank fuck that plants don’t mind seafood (nitrogen-rich!), because not all of those meaty cravings are down to the tree, and Stiles would be significantly less happy with his family inheritance if he didn’t get some kind of non-vegetable protein.

He scarfs down the first taco, then wrestles the plate away from Peter and plops it onto Peter’s broad, conveniently-located chest and starts in on his second. Peter is admittedly not trying at all, because Derek has sprawled down next to them and made rabbit shish kabobs appear from the basket. Derek is not a tease, but is a helpful, loving family member and he holds a skewer so he and Peter can eat from opposite ends. Peter promptly shows his appreciation by licking at some of the fat running over Derek’s fingers.

Stiles almost chokes on some cilantro. Then he snorts and resettles himself so he’s half-lying on Peter, his arms circling the fish tacos. “Is this a date?”

“Don’t say that word,” Peter says. Somehow he makes talking while tearing at gobbets of meat look sexy. “Or else that damn girl and her pathetic puppy is going to show up, along with your father and God knows what transplanted creature.”

Derek slides a chunk off the skewer, nibbles at it, and then hands it to Peter. “Thigh.” He sticks it in Peter’s mouth and then grabs the presumably non-thigh chunk Peter had been chewing for himself. “I know, I had to chase Whittemore off after practice.”

“I don’t remember that,” Stiles says. He’s got lime and fish juices slicking up his palm, so he starts to raise his hand to his mouth. Peter catches his eye, looks absurdly forlorn for a werewolf who regularly comes home with wild boars over one shoulder, and Stiles puts his hand up to Peter’s mouth. Is not at all surprised when Derek joins in the tongue-bath. “When did that happen?”

“Pretty much every practice,” Derek admits. He pauses and looks again at Stiles. “Do you mind?”

“Um.” Stiles tries to drag his brain back from below his belt. “Am I supposed to?”

Now Derek and Peter are both looking hesitant. They probably should just…be responsible and postmodern and fucking talk it out at some point. Yeah, they kind of don’t have stereotypical beta behavior, even for betas from the strongest pack in the region (Peter’s perfectly capable of facing down alphas from the lesser packs by himself, and does, to much family glee). And Stiles is, hah, learning on the job. And is a member of a federally-protected class twice over, once for the Nemeton and once for being a non-were, quasi-botanical alpha. And eighteen.

He’s trying, he really is. And the Hales are pretty good at remembering he’s not stupid but also not instinctive with all this. But okay, they’re all pretty terrible at not getting distracted by the fantastic sex.

“I mean, is this some…hierarchical thing?” Stiles says slowly. “I know Whittemore’s got a weird arrangement since he got wolfed after being adopted, but I thought I was clear on him not being pack.”

Derek and Peter make eerily similar faces. “He’s not pack,” Derek mutters. “I don’t even want to imagine.”

“Cora could take him when she was five,” Peter agrees. Then he grimaces and sits up on his elbows. He’s making the ‘heavy responsibilities of being the eldest, must occasionally act like it’ face. “Well, not…exactly. You don’t like him, unless that’s…” he grins at Stiles’ emphatic head-shake “…then he’s just a pest and unless there are special circumstances, or you’d like to be consulted about every one of those, we can deal with him on our own.”

Years of justifying himself and his dad to government auditors has Stiles picking out one phrase right away. “Special circumstances? Like trying to negotiate a deal?”

Peter’s tempted to bullshit him. Stiles can read it in his eyes and the twitching corners of his mouth, and Stiles digs his nails into Peter’s shoulder. “Well, here, like he’s trying to apply,” Peter sighs.

“Apply?” Stiles says, blinking. “Apply to what? To—oh, wait, _what_? To me? To me as alpha? _What_.”

Derek is cramming his face into the blanket. “Please tell him no. Please.”

“Ugh.” Stiles feels the same. He moves the fish tacos off Peter so he can smush his face into Peter’s breastbone. “Wow, that’s…I would never have—oh, my God, _Lydia_.”

“Is clearly a girl of dubious morality and unusually creative wiles,” Peter says. He absently pets Stiles’ back. “If it weren’t my pack, I think I’d admire her.”

Yeah. Much as he hates to admit it, Stiles has to agree with Peter there. Lydia by herself is just irritating. Lydia with a werewolf boyfriend asking to join up gets, as a matter of common courtesy, at least one hearing. And here Stiles was thinking that, paranoid as he is, there was no way she could ruin things way out in the woods.

“Okay, so that’s the kind of thing you should be telling me about, but you were playing dumb because you’re sneaky, passive-aggressive beta jerks,” Stiles finally says. He tilts his head enough to look at them. “I should be very upset with you, right? Very upset. Like, at least make you grovel a little.”

Peter and Derek look at him like they can’t interpret Stiles’ face and that’s genuinely concerning to them. Derek’s gotten rid of the skewer and moved closer to Peter while he’s at it; his hand shifts out to curl over Peter’s shoulder, then withdraws. He slinks down on his belly, keeping his head lower than Stiles.

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking at the ground. He puts his hand back on Peter’s arm, squeezing up and down the triceps. “If it wasn’t him—”

“If it is him, and it walks me right into Lydia Martin’s grabby hands, I’m gonna blame you,” Stiles says thoughtfully. “Yeah, it’s a nice thought to keep the trash away from me, but the pack that schemes together stays together, right?”

“Yes, alpha,” Peter says. All soft and serious, eyes fixed on Stiles, while Derek nods next to him. Nods so hard that his cheek ends up pressed against Peter’s jaw, and when Derek shivers, Peter just tilts his head a little and makes a low, comforting noise.

Stiles swallows hard. “I totally know what you’re doing, you manipulative little shits. Fine, right, take advantage of my compromised attention span.”

“But we’re _sorry_ ,” Peter murmurs. A flicker of mischief goes through his eyes. He relaxes under Stiles, and so much so that Jesus, maybe him and Derek _hadn’t_ been playing for Stiles’ dick a second ago.

Well, whatever the case, they are now, and maybe it makes Stiles a bad alpha, but fuck. Peter keeps turning his head, his lips dragging over Derek’s cheek, going pink as the stubble roughs them up. And Derek flattens himself like he’s got water for his spine, all liquid and smooth, rolling his shoulders back and pushing his hips up. Derek glances at Stiles, pure fucking heat there, then burrows under Peter’s chin and bites at the underside. He peels back his lips so his teeth are big and white against Peter’s sun-touched skin.

Peter moans languidly and stretches out to kiss along Derek’s throat, then starts nipping at the little bit of collarbone escaping from Derek’s shirt. That big muscle that runs along the shoulderblade flexes and Peter wraps his mouth over it and _sucks_ , so Stiles can practically pick out the individual capillaries as they flush and break.

Stiles’ phone rings.

Derek pulls back and he and Peter are kissing, heads upside-down to each other and Stiles can’t even see that much, just Derek’s hair and glimpses of Peter’s forehead, but the ridiculous wet, meaty sounds the two of them are making, Jesus. He doesn’t need to see. If he saw, he might just mess his pants right then and there.

His phone is still ringing. Ringing.

“God _damn_ it,” Stiles snarls. He twists around and gets it out, and he means to silence it but instead his fumbling thumb hits ‘answer.’

 _“Stiles!”_ Allison shouts. _“Stiles, there’s a thing flying around, it’s got horns and it’s breathing fire! I called Scott and he said—”_

Stiles has just enough brain cells left to slap the phone against his shoulder. “For _fuck’s sake_ ,” he says, and then he puts the phone back to his ear. “Okay, on my way, calling my dad.”

* * *

The flying thing with horns and fiery breath is a Piasa. A _Piasa_. 

Stiles finds a car with a tricked-out stereo system, rewires it for use as a loudspeaker, and yells at everybody to stay inside while Derek and Peter and Scott take turns jumping up and down in an effort to keep the Piasa from actually landing anywhere. Or getting near anything flammable. Not including themselves, apparently—Derek has to take a header into a swimming pool at one point, and Scott loses his shoes in a fireball that has both Stiles and Allison hyperventilating.

Allison showed up with her bow and composite, fire-proof arrows, good for her, but they’re nowhere near enough to take down the damn thing. When Stiles spots an SUV with government stickers barreling towards them, he nearly passes out from hyperventilating again. He’s never been so damned relieved in his life.

The Piasa screeches, climbs up and then banks hard right, seeing the car. It hovers in place, snorting smoke, and is pumping its neck for a dive when the car grows an oversized rifle. There’s a little _pfft_ and a puff of white, and then a matching puff as something lodges in the underside of the Piasa’s right wing. It screeches again, whirls madly and then drops like a rock, just in front of another skidding SUV. This one is his dad’s.

Stiles clambers out of the car he’s hijacked, then curses and lunges sideways to grab Derek by the waist. Derek’s still soaked from the pool, and also missing his shirt, and he squirts through Stiles’ hands like he’s been buttered. But he gets the point and stays back, falling into a defensive crouch next to a winded Peter. “Is it down?” he asks dubiously.

“I—” Stiles starts.

His dad and Chris Argent get out of his dad’s car. On the other side of the weakly flapping Piasa, two men step out, one in a Park Service jacket and the other in a cowboy hat and rumpled suit-jacket. The one who’s actually in uniform shoulders the dart rifle, while the other pulls out a Glock with non-regulation customizations. He walks up to the Piasa, side-steps a sudden blast of fire, and shoots it through the eye.

“Well, moot now,” Peter mutters. He’s still panting. He rolls onto his feet, then grimaces and puts his hand to his side as he stands up. Stiles looks at him, but he shakes his head and mimes smacking into something. Then he grabs Derek by the elbow and pulls till they’re almost flush, checking over the healing burn on Derek’s arm and shoulder.

They both look a little shaky, and for Peter to be showing that is something. But Stiles barely gets his hand on Peter’s shoulder before Allison pops up from behind an overturned car. She’s got Scott’s arm slung over her shoulder; Scott’s awake and trying to claim he’s okay, but he’s still walking like he’s got knives in his feet.

“Stiles?” his dad yells.

“Here, good,” Stiles says. He takes a step forward and then has to stop. His head is ringing. He puts it between his knees and the tree body-slams him with a wave of _relief-anger-worry_.

When he’s awake again, Derek is playing bed under him, while Peter is blocking his view of what sounds like a vicious argument between his dad and the newly-arrived Park Service rangers.

“…us a goddamn heads-up if you thought we had that kind of problem,” his dad is snarling. “Or were you going to wait till we had a wildfire burning down the whole county?”

“Now, I think that’s a little harsh,” says Ranger Givens.

“Harsh? Harsh is my dumping your bodies in little boxes when I send them along with _your_ drug-lord back to the Everglades,” his dad says. “What this is right now, is informing you that anything remotely fire-related is under my jurisdiction, because my _son_ —”

“Just tell me you didn’t bring the asshole who blows up trees,” Stiles mutters, shoving at Peter. When Peter doesn’t move, he claws up Peter’s back till he can look over Peter’s shoulder. “Hey, Tim, didn’t know you were coming. Is that Gen Five you got? I could’ve sworn that shit got archived.”

Tim smiles a little stiffly and tightens his hand on the rifle. Raylan Givens puts his hands on his hips and smiles like they’re just arguing over who’s going to watch the body till clean-up arrives, and Stiles’ dad is having absolutely zip of it.

“Everyone shut up,” he says. “Back to the office, now.”

* * *

“He’s kind of infamous,” Stiles says, fiddling with his coffee. “Actually, that whole office is. The Everglades are fucked-up, and that was before he brought down some really psycho new recruits from Kentucky.”

Minus his dad and the two Park Rangers, everyone is camped out in the stuffy box of a conference room the Forest Service office has. Werewolf healing means that even Scott, who got the worst of it, is already back to perfect, but Allison’s having a nasty case of adrenaline crash and neither Scott nor her dad seem eager to make her unknot from her chair. And Derek and Peter have been plastered to Stiles since they got in the car. Peter— _Peter_ —snarled off the nurse who’d wanted to check the scrapes Stiles had got at some point on his hands, and even when Melissa had shown up, he’d been reluctant to let go of Stiles’ arm.

It’s really starting to worry Stiles, but he has an idea about where this is all coming from and if he’s right, it’d be the wrong move to tackle it in front of the Argents. So yeah, little interagency gossip, let’s lighten the mood.

“They say he got transferred from the U.S. Marshals because chasing down regular criminals got too boring for him,” Scott adds, catching Stiles’ vibe. “They don’t make this public knowledge, but there’s so much illegal growing on parklands these days that the Park Service has its own anti-drug arm.”

“Are they human?” Allison asks. She’s still got her arms locked tight around her knees, but she’s peeled her head off them. 

Over it Chris and Scott exchange a relieved look. Then Chris looks vaguely irritated at sharing the moment. Scott, being Scott, politely ducks his head and covers Allison’s hands with his own. “Don’t really know them, but they work the supernatural cases,” he says. Certain agents may or may not match up with their official classifications, and anyway, Scott’s a polite boy and doesn’t out people without their permission. “You want another coffee?”

Allison smiles at him, then glances at her dad. “Actually, I, um, I could use the ladies room,” she says. “And then maybe we should go home. I don’t want to get in anybody’s way.”

“Sounds good to me,” Chris says.

He looks less thrilled about Scott stepping in to show Allison the way, claiming that the coffee machine’s in the same direction, but he allows it. Actually, he half-rises like he thinks he’ll get a coffee too, but then Allison curls her arm around Scott’s waist. Chris looks irritated and disgusted and resigned in equal measures and sits back down.

“Scott’s the least likely person in this room to hurt her, you know,” Stiles can’t help saying. Normally he stays the hell away from this—Scott’s a big boy, he has to learn about dealing with the future in-laws some time—but his best friend was just a trashcan away from being crisped and he’s feeling a little tender. “I get along with Allison, but if she ever touches my tree, I’m going to put her down.”

Chris smiles at him. It’s angry and toothy and also, understanding, and totally justifies that memo Stiles wrote on hunter-creature co-evolution when he was supposed to be explaining Fargo and the wood chipper. “Allison’s been fully informed about the Nemeton,” he says. “We’re not all ignorant, genocidal hicks.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, I help Dad with the background checks.” Stiles feels Derek shifting against him and squirms his arm free so he can sling it over Derek’s shoulders. Grumbling, Derek subsides back to scenting his neck. “He does actually give a damn about the whole due process, fair hearing bit. Asshole hunter might’ve done in the family tree but Dad’s going to tough it out and try to see the best in you all.”

Peter slides up Stiles’ back and murmurs to his neck that they can always find something to arrest the man for. Stiles is tempted, a little, but he ultimately nudges his shoulder back in negation. That’s totally a pout Peter is making against his back, but Peter seems fine to just pretend he’s dozing.

“I know, Stiles and believe me, I appreciate your father very much,” Chris abruptly says. He’s got that weird, uncomfortable look on his face again, like he wishes he could excuse himself with indigestion but his sense of duty won’t allow it. It’s a lot like Dad’s auditing season face. “Look, we don’t know each other very well. And I realize my family history and your…attachments—”

Derek does that neck-cracking thing, then settles back, and even without looking Stiles knows there’s fang out.

“—don’t help, but I’d like to…if we could just sit down and talk…” Chris says heavily, haltingly, and hell, Stiles sees where this is going now.

“Oh, hey, look, I’m not saying I’m going to fuck you up for dating him.” Stiles starts to flop backward, then remembers he’s got a werewolf taking up all the space. He rolls his eyes instead. “I mean, I will. If you fuck him up. But Jesus, he’s my dad, not my baby. If he wants to date you, he can. I do reserve the right to make judgmental faces at you but I trust Dad to not bring anybody home who’s going to try and kill us.”

Chris smiles a little. He totally gets it, Stiles can tell from the glint in his eye, and also he’s relieved and it really shouldn’t matter to Stiles what the hell Chris feels about him, but maybe it’s a tiny bit flattering. The Argent name is the epitome of mixed blessing these days, but not because they’re any less dangerous.

“I know, Stiles, and I appreciate that too,” Chris says. “But what I’m trying to say is, we might not have to do it, but I’d like it if we could do more than just have a truce. You mean a lot to your dad, and…aside from that, I think you’re someone I want to know better, and not just because I’m s—”

“…smell them, you dumbass.” Laura bangs through the doors, then heaves a sigh of relief. She drops next to the couch Stiles is on, leaning over the arm so she can scent Derek and then Peter. Then she pushes her cheek against Stiles’ and holds it for a couple seconds. “What the hell’s with the new guy?” she says, pulling back. “Hasn’t he ever seen a were before?”

Gutterson is standing in the doorway, looking vaguely amused. Stiles flips him off and then grunts as Laura climbs over him to nuzzle with Peter again. Which is a little odd; Peter and Laura aren’t nearly as touchy-feely as Peter and Derek. “He’s Park Service, not one of ours,” Stiles says. He decides he better get up before he’s smushed under a pile of wolves, and borrows Derek’s shoulder to do that. “Seriously, Tim, I thought you and Rachel at least read the briefings. Laura’s fine to come back here.”

Whatever Gutterson’s going to say is lost as another door slams open. Raylan strolls out like Stiles’ dad doesn’t have one hand twitching for a gun. He clocks the scene, pauses, and then takes off his hat and holds his head so it’s high but slightly tilted to bare a little throat. “Ma’am,” he says.

Laura’s standing in an instant, stance open for a shift to attack or defense, hands loose at her sides. She cocks her head while her uncle and her brother coil back behind Stiles. Over by the hallway door, Gutterson’s looking like he’s missing his rifle, while Stiles’ dad grimaces and then glances at Stiles.

Stiles shakes himself. Should’ve asked Scott for a coffee too, he’s getting sluggish with the post-fight comedown. Then he takes a slow step forward so he’s next to Laura. “Laura, Ranger Raylan Givens with the Park Service’s Everglades office. Raylan, Laura Hale, um, pack heir.”

Raylan smiles with his lips closed. He tips his hat to Laura.

“Huh.” Laura eyes him a little longer, then shrugs and closes the gap between them. She and Raylan brush cheeks, way briefer than she had with Stiles, and then she takes Raylan’s hat when she steps back. “You need something like this for the alligators? How does that work?”

“Oh, shit,” Derek mutters. He abruptly pushes his head into Stiles’ neck. “Shit. She and Darryl are on a break.”

“Laura, sorry to call so late,” Stiles’ dad interrupts. He stares Laura into giving back the hat, though Raylan didn’t look that concerned about it. Which, Stiles is pleased to see, is putting a _very_ disturbed look on Gutterson’s face. “Givens and Gutterson, by the door, they’re here because some big-shot drug-lord’s apparently been scoping out Beacon Hills for a vacation home to stash his illegal zoo, and maybe growing plots. They’d like to start looking around immediately.”

“Lifer omega,” Stiles hisses back at Derek. He smiles innocently when Raylan’s eyes tick his way. “Pretty sure your sister’s got higher standards than that.”

Laura grins, and she’s showing all her teeth. She’s also putting her hands on her hips, which both makes her look bigger and, well, pushes up her cleavage. “Yeah, well, a quickie tour for the out-of-towners, I guess I can make an exception, Mr. Stilinski. Just give me a sec to call Mom.”

“And powder down,” Peter says, though he sounds a lot more amused than Derek.

Stiles’ dad looks like he’s wondering whether there are any regulations requiring him to object. Then he makes up his mind and shakes his head. He gestures for Raylan and Gutterson to come into the hall, then tenses up when Chris gets up and joins them.

Well, he can handle that. Chris does need to get out of there so the Hales can have a word.

“Mom’s pissed,” Laura says as soon as they’ve got privacy. “I had to talk her down from coming over and giving your dad a piece of her mind.”

“Wait— _what_?” Stiles drops back on the couch. Then bounces straight up. “What the hell, why would she blame him? We didn’t know fuck all till those asshole Rangers showed up.”

“Stiles. Sti—alpha, please.” Peter tips a scolding look at Laura, who does tuck her head down in regret. Then he gets to his feet and puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding.”

Laura grimaces. “Yeah, well, you could see some of those fireballs from across town. She got a little freaked out when she found out you and Derek were at ground zero. Anyway, Stiles, she’s calmed down, okay, she knows this one is you and your dad’s. Well. If whoever this asshole is doesn’t show up on our land.”

“Fair,” Stiles says slowly. He rubs the side of his neck, then decides he’s going to put off Talia for another day, when he’s read up more on alpha-alpha interactions. “I’m guessing my dad’s going to come in and tell me to go home in a couple minutes. Gotta say, looking forward to it.”

All three Hales raise their brows.

“Well, I’m not that big on death by fire either,” Stiles says, and then watches the minute flinches. Maybe that had been a little blunt. “And for an armed conservationist, Givens has an awful lot of property damage happen around him. Dad and you—” he nods to Laura “—want to spend the night keeping them away from the tree, I’m gonna owe you huge, but I’m good with not being there myself.”

Laura rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look that put out by the idea of palling around with Raylan. She starts to turn, then pauses to look at Derek.

“I’m okay,” Derek mutters. He runs his hand back through his hair, then frowns at her. “Please tell me you’re not going to.”

“He’s cute,” Laura says. “Pretty put-together for an omega. And if he’s having sex, he can’t blow anything up, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Stiles says.

Peter wraps his arm around Stiles and leans over to rub his cheek against Laura’s. “Don’t do anything we can’t justify,” he says. “I’ll take Derek and Stiles over to Stiles’ place. We’ll let Talia know when we’re there.”

Laura laughs. Under it she still looks a little concerned, but she’s not crowding in so close to Peter and Derek anymore. Actually, she gives them a wide berth as they walk into the hall, which is just as well because Peter’s himself enough to be trying to grope Stiles’ ass.

Stiles fends him off, then looks up in time to see his dad shoulder Chris back, kind of sharply. “If I want a hunter horning in, Argent, I’ll pick one from the approved list,” his dad snaps.

Chris looks like that hurts more than the shoulder. He’s actually standing there and opening and closing his mouth, and Stiles has _never_ seen the guy so thrown before.

“I’m just—” Chris starts.

“I don’t know what the hell kind of right you think you get, but you don’t have it,” his dad adds. The Rangers and Laura are gone, at least, but his dad’s pulling out his buzzing phone and totally missing a horrified Scott and Allison appearing at the end of the hall. “You’re not that kind of partner.”

Allison abruptly goes furious, her fisted hand coming up as she steps forward. Scott sees Stiles, nods and grabs Allison’s arm, whispering frantically. “Hey, Dad,” Stiles says.

His dad looks up. For a second Stiles thinks he’s going to get told off, and then his dad’s face and shoulders slacken. The exhaustion and frustrated care Stiles knows is under all that yelling comes out. His dad’s gaze sweeps down just half the hall, but he definitely is picking up the angry vibes in the other half. He grimaces, closes his eyes briefly, and then opens them.

“Dad, we’re all still kind of shaky so I figured Chris could drive us home?” Stiles says. He thinks very hard at Scott to not be too fucking obvious. “Melissa’s going to be done soon, right? She can take Scott and Allison.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she just texted me,” Scott says. Thankfully, he looks solemn, and not at all like he damn well knows Melissa will take one look at Stiles’ dad and end up sticking around while Scott drives Allison back to a parent-less house.

As for his dad, the man looks like he wants to hug Stiles and punch himself in the face at the same time. Then his phone buzzes. He bites back a growl, shoves it into his pocket and nods tightly. “Fine, let me know when you’re there.”

“Yeah, will do,” Stiles says. He edges back so his dad can pass, then glances at Peter. “Sorry.”

“It’s your father,” Peter says. He eyes Chris, who seems pissed again, but with a defeated air that he’s trying to hide as Allison rushes up to him. “I’m not full of joy, I’ll be honest, but as long as I get the seat behind him, I’ll live.”

Stiles looks at him. “If you swiped my garrote when you were feeling me up…”

“It’s right there where you left it, Stiles,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. “I have claws.”

“And you two wonder why I’m insisting on getting a used car,” Stiles mutters.

* * *

The drive to Stiles’ house is…less than relaxed. Peter actually makes the most effort, engaging in a one-sided chat with a grunting Chris about the revised wild fowl quotas, but even he gives up when Chris just stops making any kind of sound whatsoever.

They pull up and Peter and Derek pile out first, stalking around the house in their usual perimeter check. Stiles hooks into the house wards, then reaches out and gives the Nemeton a quick nudge; the tree would like him to visit soon, please, but grudgingly backs down when Stiles pushes an image of the dawn sky at it. Nothing about this case has been that simple, but the Rangers had sworn up and down their target wasn’t interested in the Nemeton, and it’s also hard to hide an illegal field of dream-poppies or whatever in a burnt-out landscape, so Stiles thinks it’s okay to just rely on the alarms in the preserve.

“Come in and have some coffee,” Stiles says, shaking his head clear. He’s half-in, half-out of Chris’ SUV, with a good hold on one of the ceiling straps. 

Chris sits behind the wheel with both hands on it, flexing his fingers. Then he grinds out a sigh and turns off the engine. “Your father’s under a lot of stress. I get it, Stiles.”

“Yeah, great. So shut up and come in, and don’t make me chase you with trees. _I’m_ under a lot of fucking stress,” Stiles snaps.

Derek and Peter come back at that point. They stand around in the driveway till Chris gets out, and then fall in behind him. Stiles hears Chris let out a chuckle. It’s kind of dry and bitter, but if the man’s thawed out enough for that, he can keep. He already knows where the kitchen is, so Stiles leaves him to that and then herds Derek and Peter up to his room.

They cleaned up at the office, but everybody still smells kind of charred. Stiles can deal with it, but he’s a little surprised when, instead of heading for the shower like usual, Peter just shucks his clothes and crawls into bed. Derek follows, and lets out a wistful whuffing noise when Stiles doesn’t immediately do the same.

Stiles is texting Alpha Hale and then his dad, because that’s an easy one off the list. Then he’s opening a window, because he can deal but he’s not going to suffer more than he has to. After that he comes over to the bed and flops up against the headboard, and lets them snuffle over his legs.

“I should look into curses,” he says after a moment. Somebody pushes their nape up into his hand and he absently scratches it. “Park Service dickery, I can get, but even Givens isn’t this much of an asshole.”

“Sorry,” Peter murmurs. For once he’s not using the sex voice, and just sounds like he doesn’t want to lift his head from Stiles’ thigh. “Truly, Stiles. I know we promised you incident-free dates—”

“Well, not like you saw it coming either.” Stiles rubs Peter’s neck a little longer, then moves his hand to give Derek some petting. He looks over them, both with their heads tucked way into his legs. “Hell, I should be apologizing to you. I bet your sex lives weren’t this ridiculous before I showed up. Well. _Lack_ of sex, if we’re going to be accurate.”

Peter moves his shoulder. Somehow that translates for Derek, who irritably shoves Peter in the side. Then Derek pushes his head into Stiles’ stomach. “Has to stop sooner or later,” he mutters. “Anyway, doesn’t matter, you’re here.”

Stiles must have his dubious face on or something, because Peter rolls over, looks at him and sighs. Then he curls up to Stiles’ hip, pressing a soft kiss where Stiles’ shirt is riding up. “At risk of stating the obvious, Stiles, the sex is fantastic but it’s hardly something you choose an alpha for.”

“Oh, really? And here I thought it was the insane chemistry that had you stalking me all over town, and into the woods, and sex clubs, and…hey, ow, not a chew toy.” Stiles pulls his fingers out of Peter’s mouth, then chucks Peter under the chin. It’s on the rough side but Peter half-closes his eyes and purrs like Stiles just tickled him. “I—no, yeah, I like you outside of bed, too. I just…well, have more experience with the in-bed stuff. Results of a misspent mid-teenage years researching really twisted creeps, and all that.”

Peter opens his eyes all the way and studies Stiles in silence for a couple seconds. Then he reaches over and wraps his hand around Stiles’ wrist. It’s a loose grip, warm and comfortable, just there.

“Stiles,” he says, quiet but firm. “You have nothing to apologize for. You’re the alpha we wanted, the alpha we _chose_. And much of that was because the sex _wasn’t_ why you accepted us.”

“I…am very flattered, but I also seem to remember really fucking crazy sex next to the Nemeton and Gabriel’s body,” Stiles says slowly. Though that knot in him, the one he’s only just realized was there, is starting to loosen up.

Peter rolls his eyes. “And before that, do you remember avoiding us because you were afraid we’d be obligated to move with you?” He tugs at Stiles’ hand, then lays his forehead against the back of Stiles’ wrist. “You’re young, you’re learning, but it matters to you, what kind of alpha you are. We’ll wait.”

Stiles looks at his bowed head for a couple minutes. That knot is totally loose now, but it doesn’t mean all the tension is gone. Actually, whatever the hell the knot had tied up, it all seems to be crammed up into the back of Stiles’ throat, making it tight and dry. He swallows and it hurts a little. Swallows again, because he’s a stubborn asshole and Jesus, because he _does_ want to do right, and the second time it’s not quite as bad.

“I think maybe next time we try staying in,” Stiles finally says. He slides his fingers into Peter’s hair, toying with a curl, and then leans over and ruffles Derek’s head, too. “If I gotta deal with this shit, I want to be able to collapse right afterward.”

“You could just stay,” Derek says, but he’s shifting grumpily aside so Stiles can get out of the bed. He stretches up to nose at Stiles’ arm, then presses his face into Stiles’ side for a long second. “Just…don’t take forever.”

Stiles pauses.

“I’m fine,” Derek says, a touch defensive. He slumps back onto the bed, most of his face buried in blanket folds, but his eyes glitter in the semi-dark. “We’re fine. Dad died a while ago, we’re not fire-phobic, it just—hits sometimes. Be fine in the morning.”

“Yeah, well…you know, whatever works for you, I’m good with it,” Stiles says lamely. For all that he makes fun of the mandatory counseling sessions agents have to have, he sometimes wishes he paid better attention to the jargon they use. At least that’d give him something to work with. “Anyway, I’ll be back up in a sec. Chris isn’t much of a talker.”

* * *

“Here,” Chris says, pushing a mug towards Stiles.

Stiles sits down opposite him at the kitchen island. “Dad hasn’t dated in a long time,” he says. “I don’t know if anyone told you what happened to my mom, but the aftermath was messy. He had to take care of me and help track down the guy responsible, and then there was all this crap about making sure _I_ was stable, making sure if they gave me another tree I could take it, like—”

“I overstepped,” Chris sighs. He rubs at his eye and Stiles suddenly notices the guy looks pretty peaked, and it’s not just from tonight. Those are bags from many, many late nights in a row, and not sex-late nights. “Look, I’m—I’ll be a man and apologize to him directly, but you probably deserve one too.”

“Um.” Suddenly Stiles thinks maybe he should’ve texted Scott to find out what Allison had been checking the garage for. “So…I don’t know what you think, but my dad and I don’t give each other all the details on what we’re doing. But if it’s about offering to help with this asshole, he shouldn’t have bitten your head off like that. Yeah, you don’t have a license yet, but that’s just unprofessional.”

Chris hunches over his coffee. “It’s not just—Stiles, what do you know about hunters?”

“Generally? Because specifically, I can get anybody’s criminal record, including the sealed and expunged parts, and I’m also penpals with a couple people on the European and Asian hunter associations,” Stiles says. “I know a lot of professional-interaction stuff, but I’m guessing this is some kind of internal community thing? That probably gets handed to the DOJ agencies.”

In all honesty, Stiles doesn’t normally think of hunters as a separate ‘community.’ They definitely don’t act like it, the odd family like the Argents aside—and those families are all transplants from regions with well-established infrastructure, like Europe. The Forest Service and the other licensing agencies do their best, but America’s still the Wild West as far as hunters go. Anybody with a yen to fuck around and a basic set of weapons can set up shop.

“We’ve got…traditions. When we’re serious.” Chris rubs the side of his face, then jerks up his chin and looks Stiles dead in the eye. “Look, I never meant to put any obligations on your family. I’m not that much of a fossil. But these traditions were handed down for hundreds of years, and they mean something to me personally. I just…your father means something to me, too. I just wanted to honor that. And it’s been a long time since I’ve dated. I don’t think I can do it any other way.”

Then he puts his head down again. He swishes his cup around, then picks it up and downs it in one swallow like he’s pretending it’s something more alcoholic. When he sets the mug back on the counter, he closes his eyes and the spot between his brows twitches, same as Stiles’ dad’s does when he’s got a migraine coming on.

“I’m not sure what exactly you did,” Stiles says after a moment. “But as long as you weren’t proposing one-sided marriage or something like that to him…like I said, Dad hasn’t dated in forever. And before that, my mom was only his second girlfriend ever. He doesn’t do casual either. So…look, yeah, you guys should talk. I can hold your weapons if you’re worried about that.”

Chris glances up at Stiles, then snorts. He pushes back a little from the island, his shoulders a bit looser. “You’re a good son,” he says quietly. “A good person.”

“I want him to be happy.” Stiles shrugs and finally tries his coffee. It’s actually really good; Chris clearly knows his way around the fancy over-spigoted Italian chrome monster Peter had insisted on getting them. “He’s given up a ton, first for Mom, then for me. He should get something once in a while, and I don’t need details, I really don’t, but if Melissa’s okay with you too, you must be good at something.”

Okay, so that’s what a blush looks like on Chris Argent. He snorts again. “Melissa is a remarkable woman. She makes it look easy.”

“She’s also known me and my dad for forever. I think seeing us panic about budget submission time automatically disqualifies you from any competition,” Stiles says. He sips his coffee, then gets up. “So, if you’re feeling gentlemanly, you know where the couch is and there are fresh sheets in the dryer. Otherwise get dressed before you come down for breakfast, okay? Or else I don’t know how I’m going to look Allison in the eye at school.”

He doesn’t let Chris get in a response, though a startled laugh floats out after Stiles. Personally, he figures it’s fifty-fifty whether Chris takes the suggestion; his dad is probably _not_ going to come home tonight for the two of them to have whatever talk they need to have, but there’s no way Scott is doing the smart thing and kissing Allison goodnight on the front step, and Stiles figures he’ll be buying his buddy some time either way. And if Chris does stick around for breakfast, well, Stiles might be willing to soften up his dad with bacon.

“Finally,” Derek says, immediately absorbing Stiles into the blanket nest. “Laura texted, she says the Rangers have given up for tonight but she’s taking them around tomorrow. Checking out the area around Whittemore’s place, there’s been some new buyers.”

Stiles blinks. Then he rolls over, ignoring the muffled protests, and gets out his phone. “Just a sec,” he says. He puts his phone on the side table and then collapses face-first into Peter’s chest. “Okay, ugh, sleep.”

* * *

“I’m sorry you saw that,” Stiles’ dad says. He’s just sitting there and staring at the bacon like it’s going to morph into asparagus on him. Like that’s happened since Stiles got the hang of transformative runes. “I’m sorry I did that, said that. That was…my temper got the better of me. I shouldn’t have let it.”

“Just tell me Chris using your shower means you stopped being a jerk,” Stiles says. He glances up at the ceiling. “He always go this long? Peter’s going to be pissy if all the hot water is used up.”

Stiles’ dad looks at Stiles like that’s something Stiles is supposed to handle. Then he sighs and picks up his fork. He definitely licks his lips as he spears a strip, but he still doesn’t eat it. “You didn’t have to. I…thank you for doing what you did, Stiles, that was a good call, but we’re both adults. We should be cleaning up our own messes.”

“Well, you stick around when I fuck up, too, so stop being all weird about it when I do the same thing. And eat the damn bacon before the wolves show up,” Stiles mutters. The waffle iron beeps and Stiles pops it open, then pours maple syrup on it till even his dad looks a little put off. It confuses some people but it makes perfect sense to Stiles: the Nemeton likes blood and bosses the shit out of the rest of the timber stock, maple syrup’s basically concentrated tree blood, Stiles therefore can, and does, have as much as he wants. “Hey, so, if we’re, you know, done with all the relationship drama, I had an idea.”

The upstairs shower stops. Peter pads into the kitchen, freshly shaved, hair not styled yet, and goes for the pitcher of orange juice while Derek, right behind him, grabs a strip of bacon straight from the frying pan. 

Stiles’ dad eyes Stiles. “An idea.”

The doorbell rings. “Yep! That’s it right there, hang on.”

When Stiles gets back to the kitchen, Chris has joined them. Chris is dressed, but if he’s not going to towel off properly, the tee-shirt and jeans are going to cling and he totally deserves being weirded out by Lydia staring at him.

“Miss Martin,” Peter says, like he’s not sure about Stiles’ sanity.

“Hey, dad, this is Lydia,” Stiles says. “So you know her dad’s a surveyor, and she’s interested in the Forest Service’s graduate fellowships program, and anyway I thought we could ask her about surveying stuff. Because you know, if a drug-lord’s gonna move into the neighborhood with a private menagerie and all, it occurred to me that maybe he wouldn’t want to just buy a place and be on record with the title office? And maybe he’d want to see what abandoned lots and whatever have already been zoned for containment and portal transportation so he doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel moving his shit?”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Stilinski,” Lydia says, smiling broadly. She gives Peter and Derek polite nods, and then pauses at Chris. “And Mr. Argent. As a concerned citizen, I’m more than happy to offer any help I can to a criminal investigation.”

Stiles’ dad blinks twice. Then he stuffs two strips of bacon in his mouth, chews quickly, and swallows. He gets up and holds out his hand. “Have a seat, Lydia. Let’s talk.”

* * *

Portals are dangerous, unstable magic, which is why nobody to date has managed to figure out how to use them to revolutionize mass transportation. They’re also the perfect explanation for where the hell these animals keep coming from, and why neither Stiles nor his dad (nor the Park Service, fuck you and your smirky condescension, Givens) have been able to pick up on it.

“Should’ve thought of it sooner,” Stiles mutters. “They’re illegal drugs traffickers, why the hell would they bother with rigging up a semi when they can just screw around with highly explosive spells?”

Lydia pauses, but when nobody responds to him, she goes back to marking spots on a map with a pen. “So once you’ve cross-indexed water usage with electricity spikes—I’m assuming they don’t run on generators all the time—and then overlay that with previous warding permits, you’ve narrowed it down to these three locations.”

“That one’s out,” Stiles’ dad says. He taps at a spot near the hospital, where an old-fashioned sanatorium called Eichen House had used to stand. “It’s a parking lot now, you can see it from the west side of the hospital. I bet the water and the electricity are just artifacts from the new diagnostic machines they had installed. Melissa mentioned they keep shorting out.”

Peter points at a location in the mostly-abandoned industrial zone. “We can check this one just to be sure, but we go through this area every other week to make sure no ferals are holing up in the buildings. It was empty last week.”

“I looked there three days ago, didn’t see anything,” Chris adds. He and Peter size each other up for a second, and then Chris offers a diffident shrug. “It was on my way home.”

Stiles’ dad looks like he might have an opinion on that, but instead he opts for pulling the map over to look closer at the third spot. “That’s bordering the preserve,” he says.

“There are tunnels,” Peter says, with a glance towards Stiles. “They’re a separate installation from ours. Abandoned military bunker from the Cold War days, I believe. I’ve only been there once or twice, but if the concrete’s held up, it’d be thick enough to keep the roots out.”

“Yeah, Nemeton doesn’t have radar senses.” Stiles reaches for his laptop. “If it’s military, we should be able to get hold of the blueprints. I bet Jensen’s still up, or wait, if they’re that old, I should probably bug Boggs. Derek, you think Laura will have got over to Findlay Point by now, or—”

Stiles’ father pushes back from the table. “If she can keep them over there for another couple hours, I think that’ll be enough of a buffer,” he says. “Derek, would you mind also asking your mother to watch the other end of that ravine, in case any strays funnel down it? Stiles, I’m going to call the sheriff’s office and have them set up roadblocks just to be on the safe side. Do you remember where we packed the…what?”

“Um.” Stiles glances at Lydia, who is sitting with her hands clasped primly in her lap and her eyes positively _shining_ with interest. Then at Peter and Chris, who both seem nonplussed by where this is going. “So. Dad. Not to be a nag or anything, but…drug dealer? Clearly got at least a level five mage with him? And we have Rangers who’re supposed to be capturing him? I mean, yeah, normally I am all about stealing their thunder, but that’s me and you are you and ugh, I am being a nag, what the hell. I blame your side of the family.”

“It’s next to the preserve, Stiles. I’ll let Givens and Gutterson handle the actual arrest, but I’ll be damned if I trust them to shut down the portal. You remember what happened in Lafayette. They never did find the other half of the car,” Stiles’ dad says. He pulls out his phone. “So we go and we shut down the portal before they show up. And _just_ that, kid, because we both know exactly which side of the family the overachieving heroics come from.”

Then he stalks out of the kitchen, snapping commands at whatever poor idiot’s picked up at the sheriff’s office. Stiles blinks a few times. “Okay. Okay, then. Well, I have some blueprints to get, so one of you go follow him and make sure he doesn’t take off on his own. Because yep, I _totally_ know which side.”

He’s not looking at anyone in particular, but Peter and Chris happen to be nearest, because Derek, with the instincts of a well-teased child, has ducked away to call his mom. Peter looks over his shoulder at Stiles’ dad, then turns to Chris and makes a magnanimous go-ahead gesture. Chris scowls but obligingly steps out.

Stiles shoots off a couple emails and then shuts his laptop. He turns and looks at Lydia, who promptly recrosses her legs like she wasn’t looking over his shoulder.

“Okay, you got your in with my dad, now spill,” he says. “And don’t feed me that line about the fellowship. That thing’s all about library research and here you are, acting like you’re dying to get into the field.”

“Because I _am_ ,” Lydia says. The glint in her eyes dims a little, but not because she’s losing interest or getting intimidated. On the contrary, she’s looking so predatory that Stiles can see Derek and Peter moving into flanking positions behind them. “Do you know that banshees can incapacitate full-grown fire wyrms? Or that a banshee cry is the only sound that will make a llorona flee? Or that we don’t just detect imminent death, but actually have—”

“—a limited ability to speak with departing spirits.” Stiles pushes back from the table for a better look at her. She doesn’t seem like she’s been possessed: when his foot swings near her shoe, she yanks it back and then frowns down at it to see if it’s been scuffed. “Are we frustrated that banshees tend to get shunted into healthcare?”

“We are,” Lydia says, beginning to smile again. “Not that there’s anything wrong with healthcare, it’s an honored profession and all. But would you waste _this_ —” she gestures at herself “—in hospital scrubs or one of those boxy white coats?”

“And here I thought we were going for the dramatic reveal that your outside is actually just protective coloring, and you’re really not as high-maintenance as you look,” Stiles says dryly.

Lydia dismissively flips her hands, getting up. “It’s as protective as your social-outcast act is, Stiles. And it wasn’t your father’s introduction I was going for. Jackson has his drawbacks, I’ll admit, but he and I are long-term. He needs an alpha, I need a field team who won’t freak out when I literally scream someone’s head off, and I think _you_ would like to find out just how I do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to change my shoes. Nobody in their right mind subjects even mediocre Louboutins to forest muck.”

“Stiles,” Peter says in her wake. “Stiles. Are you all right?”

“She can scream someone’s head off?” Stiles says faintly. “Do you think that’s an explosion, or an implosion? Like, the soundwaves collapse the internal structure or—”

“Can we just shut down this portal?” Derek sighs.

Stiles blinks. Then flips his laptop open again. “Oh! Oh, right. Yeah, awesome, Boggs came through. Gimme a couple minutes, these scans are in crappy shape.”

* * *

They send Jackson to help Scott, Allison and Talia guard the ravine that the back tunnel opens into, and post Forest Service rangers and whatever local law enforcement isn’t redirecting traffic at the front tunnel, with Melissa to coordinate that and any medical aid. Laura reports in that she’s taking the scenic route over with the Park Rangers, so Stiles reaches out through the Nemeton and closes up all the outlets he can with roots, concentrating on any active power lines he can find.

Since it’s on the edge of the preserve, and the Nemeton is only recently revived, he can’t get all of them. Stiles’ dad and Chris short out the rest, and then crawl into an unblocked ventilation tunnel to find and shut down the portal. Peter squats by the opening, keeping an ear out for trouble, while Derek and Lydia keep Stiles company back at the treeline.

Much as Stiles would love to get in on that, he can’t manipulate the containment circle they’ve set up in case the portal blows up if he’s underground. He frets and babbles and occasionally waves some roots in the air, until Lydia starts peppering him with questions about portal destabilization, which weirdly, calms him down. Derek doesn’t seem to appreciate the anecdotes on partial dematerialization, but Stiles can’t think about shit happening to his dad if he’s trying to remember what the hell happened to some poor NSA agent back in the eighties.

It’s pretty good right up till his dad and Chris come tumbling out of the tunnel like a fireball’s chasing them. His dad actually half-stomps over Peter, then catches him by the arm and drags him towards Stiles. “Portal’s down,” his dad gasps. “But the mage, she’s—”

Stiles is already running to rework the runes he’s got scattered around the tunnel. The ones shaped out of roots, well, he can change those with a thought. But the trees don’t go all the way around and there’s one stretch where he had to do it with spray-chalk. He scuffs at the grass frantically with his foot, fumbling the spray-can in his hands, and then he drops to his belly as he hears Derek roaring.

Derek and a woman are squaring off about thirty yards away, outside of the containment circle. The woman’s got nasty-looking black ribbon things swirling around her hands, and her eyes are completely red, no whites or pupils. She flexes her hands and the black ribbons whip out and around her, intercepting a hail of bullets from Stiles’ dad and Chris. Then they lash out and catch a diving Derek on the leg. He snarls and twists around, trailing blood.

Peter feints in, then swerves away in a clatter of pebbles and half-rotted leaves that sends the woman stumbling back. She’s almost back in the circle and Stiles scrambles to his hands and knees, spraying chalk like mad. But then she catches herself. Grins nastily. The black ribbons get bigger, till they look like they’re cables as thick as Stiles’ wrist.

One arrows at Stiles’ dad and Stiles forgets about the runes and slams a wall of roots up from the ground. The ribbon rams into it, then _stabs_ through. Stiles barely notices his dad rolling to safety because he feels like he’s been punched in the face. His head is reeling, and then he sees blood on his hand and realizes he’s bleeding from the nose and mouth.

He’s still tangling with the ribbon—the roots are still tangling with it, but the ribbon is eating like acid wherever it touches. Stiles coughs, then spits out some more blood. He dimly hears people shouting at him and curses through a mouthful of wet copper, clawing blindly for the spray can.

His hand gets around it just as there’s this—weird keen. It’s like a police siren, one second an ear-splitting shriek, the next a distant whine. Stiles shakes his head, wipes at his chin, and sprays over the last rune. Then he looks up.

The mage has dropped to her knees just inside the circle, clutching at her ears, and blood is coming out from between her fingers. Stiles’ dad stands up, snaps open his gun and reloads it. He shoots what Stiles assumes is a neutralizer bullet into the mage’s left lower leg, since the mage cries out and then all the black ribbons collapse in a bunch of dust.

Lydia, standing over Stiles, lowers the little black electronic thingy she’s got. It’s rectangular and about the size of a cellphone, and has a speaker on one side. “Directed amplification,” she says, catching his stare. “I hacked it out of one of those infomercial aids for the hearing-impaired.”

Stiles still has blood dribbling out of his nose. Blood and tree sap, which is even stickier and grosser. He leans over, presses his finger to one side of his nose and blows out hard. That gets out a big wad. He pulls his sleeve over his hand and stuffs it against his nose to get whatever’s left.

“I get it,” he says. “You want to be Q.”

Lydia beams. She slips the device into her pocket and then pulls out a travel-size pack of tissues in a cute floral pattern. After handing that over, she wanders off so she can check out his dad’s handcuffing technique.

By that point, Derek and Peter have booked it over to Stiles. Neither of them look injured, aside from some ripped clothing, and Peter’s as interested in properly inserting tissue cones into Stiles’ nose as he is in scenting Stiles, so mentally they seem all right. “She’s growing on me,” Peter says.

“She’s okay,” Derek mutters. He licks at the bloody sap on Stiles’ jaw, grimaces, and then keeps licking. Also rubs at it with his fingers and then wipes his hand off on his jeans. Social grooming, clearly, not supposed to be sexy but it’s Derek. He looks amused when Stiles shifts uncomfortably. “Do we _have_ to take Jackson to get her?”

“She does seem to like him, God knows why.” Stiles loops his arm over Peter’s shoulders and pokes at the tissue wadded in his nose, then winces as he feels a fresh trickle. “Well. They’ve both still got to get through the initial interview. Which, by the way, I have no idea how to do, so you’d better learn me up on it.”

Derek pauses. Then he doesn’t even have to look at Peter; he gets smirky all on his own. “Sounds good,” he says, all teeth. “Happy to help, alpha.”

“Ugh, don’t get psychotic yet,” Stiles says, though he leans in and whiffs Derek’s neck as he starts to get to his feet. “C’mon, let’s go see if your sister’s shown up yet. I want to kick these assholes out of town already.”

* * *

As promised, Laura delivers the Park Rangers just in time for Raylan to get into some throwback standoff with the drug-dealer and end up shooting him dead. Tim looks appropriately put-upon, and sides with Stiles’ dad in sticking Raylan with the post-operations PR work. Raylan looks slightly less bitter when Laura says she’s going to hang around to watch the clean-up, as the local pack representative and, in her words, somebody who eats things who are going to be munching on the contaminated foliage around here.

“You could do better,” Derek says to her. “Darryl’s an asshole, but this is a bad idea even as a revenge screw. Even the other guy’s better, Stiles showed us their demerit records.”

Laura gives Derek a sisterly pat on the cheek, grinning madly. “Little brother, I love you dearly, but I don’t understand how you still don’t see the awesome in going two for two. Especially with your alpha.”

Derek looks sharply at Gutterson—who is not a werewolf, last Stiles checked, but who has something going on to have the kind of hearing to make him look that pale—and then gives Laura mournful, disappointed eyes. “I’m _not_ coming to that family dinner,” he says.

“I don’t think that’s the kind of meal she’s looking for,” Peter says merrily. He and Laura exchange a quick nuzzle, and then he slips Laura a vial of what Stiles is betting is wolfsbane tincture for alcoholic fun purposes. “Well, we’re off. Do try not to overload the crematory, Laura.”

“Uncle, I would never,” Laura says with big, big eyes.

It’s cute and all, this familial traumatizing of Derek, but Stiles only has half an ear on it because he and his father are having their own vaguely awkward talk. “Nah, I can get enough through the trees,” Stiles says. “This is far enough out that the Nemeton’s not that concerned with it, now that nobody’s actively trying to kill us. We’re gonna have to come back out when the hazmat and de-warding crews are through, check the treeline, but right now I’d just be sitting around telling people how to do their jobs. And I thought we get in trouble when I do that. Or are we Freaky Fridaying that one too?”

Stiles’ dad makes a face. He keeps looking over his shoulder every ten seconds at Raylan, who has his hands up and is looking desperately for someone to save him from Melissa in angry-mom mode. “If I wanted to argue jurisdiction, I’d skip Givens and just call his supervisor,” he says reluctantly. “Still, I think I’m going to stay with Laura for a while. I don’t know any of the junior rangers well enough to pick one that’ll stay up with Givens’ bullshit. But you can go on home if you want. Are you sure the tree doesn’t need an extra feeding? Your face—”

“It was a bitch, yeah, but I think half of it was just sheer shock.” Stiles scrubs at his chin again. “Been a while since the tree’s run into that branch of black magic. We just fed it this week, it’s okay. But I could use a fresh shirt, so I think we’ll take off. You want me to set out dinner for you?”

“Ah, nah.” Stiles’ dad shifts from foot to foot. “I’m—Chris asked if I’d come eat at his house. We talked a little this morning but didn’t have that much time, and…we should really do this right. You don’t have to come to this dinner, but we should both go over there sometime.”

And shit, Stiles remembers. He catches Allison’s eye (not that hard, she’s obviously talked to her dad but she’s been giving Stiles’ dad looks like she wants her own talk with him) and mouths _hunter courting rituals_. Allison blinks blankly a few times, and then a light goes on. She mouths back _I have a book!_

“I have a briefing paper you might be interested in,” Stiles’ dad says dryly.

“God, Dad, way to bury the lead,” Stiles mutters. He shakes his head, then sighs and gives the man a tight hug. “Just don’t get engaged when I’m not looking, okay? I can’t choose colleges and pick out china patterns at the same time.”

His dad goes pale as Gutterson. “Jesus, son. Go home.”

“Going!” Stiles says cheerfully, and goes to collect his pack.

* * *

“If you answer that I’ll—” Derek’s urgent snarl goes guttural and strung out as he shudders under Stiles, eyes rolling back into his head.

Stiles applies his teeth to Derek’s tattoo again, scraping at the edges of one whorl, while he gropes for his chiming phone. Somebody tries to push his hand off, but then Derek humps up and his fingers slip out of Peter to clutch at the sheets; two different kinds of irritation fight it out over Peter’s face before he gives in and goes with shoving Derek’s fingers back between his legs. Derek moans into Peter’s shoulder, reaches back with his free hand. Hooks it around the back of Stiles’ thigh and yanks so Stiles’ balls are wedging apart the cheeks of Derek’s ass.

They both groan, but the fucking phone. Damn it. Stiles rocks into Derek and gets his hand on the stupid thing at the same time, and then props himself up on Derek’s back to answer the call. “Scott? Scott, if there’s a hodag, or fucking _Sasquatch_ , fuck, whatever, I’m not—”

 _“Stiles? Stiles, are you…having sex?”_ Scott’s wrinkled brow and shocked puppy eyes are clearly audible.

Peter slings his arm around Derek and tries to paw the phone from Stiles’ ear. Stiles intercepts and slaps Peter’s wrist to the bed, and then grinds down on it. Which sinks him _way_ deep into Derek, who does something that makes Peter hitch up, eyes shut tight, mouth open. “Yes!” Stiles snaps. “Yes, now what?”

_“Er. Well, your dad and Chris kind of…kicked me and Allison out, and Mom’s still at work so I was gonna see if you were free—”_

“Oh, my God.” Stiles shuts the call down with his chin, then lets the phone clatter off his shoulder, across Derek’s back and onto the bed somewhere. He scrapes his teeth over Derek’s tattoo, earning himself a shivering whine that fucking _ripples_ down his cock, and then smushes his face down. “Oh, my God, Scott, go screw in the preserve like every other teenager. Why am I friends with him?”

“Alpha,” Derek says, gritting his teeth. He’s gnawing at Peter’s shoulder, and Peter isn’t objecting only because it looks like Peter’s managed to get himself off, sneaky bastard that he is. “Alpha, Stiles, if you don’t _move_ —”

Stiles hikes himself up Derek’s back. He’s a little shorter so he has to drag on Derek’s shoulder, make him bend, and then he fastens his teeth to Derek’s throat. Derek shuts up on a grateful whimper.

They roll half-off Peter, frenzied and ungraceful, Stiles scrabbling to keep pumping forward while his knees slide all over the place. Derek grinds back into him, _flexes_ , and shit, Stiles is gone. His foot digs into the mattress for one last, failing thrust, and Derek rides it back onto Peter, shaking and keening, just a couple seconds behind Stiles.

“So,” Stiles says when his mouth is working again. “So, that worked.”

“Mmm.” Peter’s eeled himself out from under them only far enough to lip at Stiles’ shoulder. “The mountain ash probably isn’t necessary. Everyone in our family can read a warning text.”

“Are other weres in town,” Stiles says, and then pets Derek when he makes a denying grumble and tries to hide under Peter’s side. “Relax, my dad swears the Park guys are shipping out tomorrow. And isn’t Laura due back at her externship?”

Derek grudgingly nods. Then he pulls his head out and up. “Jackson’s early.”

Peter sniffs. “I think he brought a present. I smell quail.”

Stiles is so not getting up for _quail_ , Jesus. “Tell him I know Lydia knows I’m a vegetarian eighty percent of the time. If he didn’t at least bring me some meat-free lasagna, we don’t want him.”

“I like quail,” Peter protests. Way less than half-heartedly, he’s more interested in snuggling in as Derek peels himself off the bed.

“I’ll take the quail first, then tell him,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. Then he crawls back in for a quick but tongue-y kiss with Stiles. “Do we need more lube?”

“Uh, well, since you’re up anyway…” Stiles skritches Derek’s nape before letting him go. He watches Derek get all the way to the hall before realizing that Derek has no intention of dressing before answering the door.

Oh, well. Jackson wants in, he’ll get over it. Or Lydia will get him over it. Whichever. Stiles curls back against Peter and waits for the outraged screech.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I dropped _R.E.D._ and _The Losers_ references. I've read some really good were AU fics for the _The Losers_.
> 
> Omegas in this 'verse are still side-eyed a lot. But the military and quasi-military law enforcement agencies are kind of just really, really big packs, and offer a very respected lifestyle, so omegas in those professions are uneasy exemptions to the normal social disapproval. I doubt I'll ever spin out the _Justified_ background, but Raylan is definitely an omega by choice, doesn't give a shit what other people think about it, and has a lot of personal drama because he's still a magnetic alpha-type but unlike, say, Stiles, he's not interested in the least in taking that on. Tim's just along for babysitting reasons. Also, he lost the coin toss with Rachel.
> 
> The trailer Stiles and Peter watch is for _What We Do In The Shadows_ , which is hilarious and highly recommended by me. 
> 
> BAMF Sheriff Stilinski got so much easier to picture once I found out that Linden Ashby played Johnny Cage way back in the _Mortal Kombat_ movie.


End file.
